Professor Jenny Hartley

Professor Jenny Hartley is particularly interested in nineteenth century literature, in women's writing, and in reading groups.

She has lectured at Roehampton for many years, and supervised a range of MA and PhD theses.

Jenny's next book, 'Dickens and the House of Fallen Women', will be published by Methuen in August 2008. It is about Urania Cottage, the Home for Fallen Women which Charles Dickens set up with the financial support of the millionaire philanthropist Angela Burdett Coutts, and with which he was closed involved for over a decade.

At Roehampton she is currently pioneering an innovationary undergraduate module, 'About Reading', stuudying reading patterns and behaviour.

Recent work

Jenny has published in a number of journals, magazines and newspapers. She has also appeared on BBC radio book programmes, and is a jury member for the Penguin/Orange Readers' Group Prize. She has recently given conference papers and talks in Australia, France, Leeds and Leicester.

Jenny is an adviser for the AHRC funded Beyond the Book project. She currently runs two prison reading groups, and this has led to invitations to talk at Reading and Health events. Please see www.prisonreadinggroups.org for more details of Roehampton's work with prison reading groups.

Supervision

Three of Jenny's PhD students have recently completed their PhDs successfully. Jenny is happy to receive enquiries from applicants thinking of working in her areas of expertise.

Recent Publications and Papers

Books

'Reading Groups' (Oxford University Press, 2001).

'The Reading Groups Book 2002-2003 Edition' (Oxford University Press, 2002

Chapters, Articles, Introductions:

Chapter ‘Letters are everything these days’ in Rebecca Earle, ed. Epistolary Selves: Letters and Letterwriters 1600-1945 (Ashgate, 2000) pp 186-209.

Chapter ‘Warriors and Healers, Impostors and Mothers: Betty Miller’s On the Side of the Angels, in Aranzazu Usandizaga and Andrew Monickendam, eds. Dressing Up for War, Transformations of Gender and Genre in the Discourse and Literature of War (Amsterdam and New York, Rodopi, 2001), pp 173-188.

Chapter on Clemence Dane and Virgina Woolf for Gender and Warfare, ed. Angela K. Smith, Manchester University Press, 2004.

Chapter for book on reading groups for University of Toronto Press, ed. DeNel Rehberg Sedo, 2008.

Article ‘Little Dorrit in Real Time: The Embedded Text’, Publishing History, 52, 2002, pp 5-18.

Article ‘Undertexts and Intertexts: The Women of Urania Cottage, Secrets and Little Dorrit’, Critical Survey, 17, 2005

Introduction to Vere Hodgson, Few Eggs and No Oranges (Persephone Press, 1999).

Contribution to Reading and Reader Development, The Pleasure of Reading, ed Judith Elkin (Facet, 2003).

Reviews and articles in Gender and History, Women’s Studies International Forum, Times Literary Supplement, The Independent, The Bookseller, The Reader.